Pope Francis' U.S. visit may have political value for President Obama, who shares some views: (BOG)
President Obama will personally welcome Pope Francis at the airport when he arrives for his first U.S. tour, a change for a protocol operation that normally only rolls out the red carpet at the White House.
President Obama will personally welcome Pope Francis at the airport when he arrives for his first U.S. tour, a change for a protocol operation that normally only rolls out the red carpet at the White House.
But Obama's aides expect the immensely popular pope to shine a spotlight on some of the president's highest-priority domestic and international concerns.
Climate change, economic justice and criminal justice reform are not only at the top of Obama's to-do list for his final 16 months in office. They're also the subject of writings and public remarks of the church leader whose star power is on the rise while the president is a lame duck.
In addition to public Masses and an address to both houses of Congress, the pope's planned schedule in Washington, Philadelphia and New York from Sept. 22-27 includes a school, a prison and other telegenic stops where one could imagine Obama pushing his own policy agenda.
The two leaders already share one foreign policy achievement that shows their shared interests.
After Obama visited the Vatican in March 2014, Pope Francis and his senior aides helped to secretly broker a thaw between the United States and Cuba. The two longtime adversaries restored diplomatic relations this summer, and both Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro publicly thanked Francis for his intervention.
During his U.S. visit, the pope will chat with inmates at a prison in northeast Philadelphia to highlight his call for prison reform. It's no coincidence that two months ago, Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit a federal prison and talk to inmates as part of his own efforts to overhaul parts of the criminal justice system.
And as Obama pushes for an international consensus to battle global warming ahead of the United Nations conference on climate change this fall, White House aides cite the power of the pope's passionate entreaties to Christians worldwide about caring for the creation.
In June, the pope issued a 184-page encyclical, Laudato Si, that called for sweeping action around the globe to combat environmental degradation and climate change that he said was due mostly to fossil fuels and human activity....
LATimes: http://fw.to/mhRP6Yd
